Best of Boston

2018 Best
Italian Restaurant

Erbaluce

Named for a rare Piedmont grape, Charles Draghi’s Erbaluce is the rare 2018 restaurant that manages to do just about everything right without calling too much attention to itself. Maybe it’s the tucked-away Bay Village location, or, more likely, the fact that the veteran chef isn’t on Instagram and hasn’t tweeted in years, but is still in the kitchen night after night, churning out a soulful deep dive into northern Italian cooking, from wild boar meatballs that resemble breakfast sausage in the best way possible to an impeccable duck-egg-yolk carbonara with house-made bucatini.